Ha! This has NOTHING to do with Ackbar!

Beginning work on the AGA fleet in the little spare time I have outside of classes and homework. I got two done this weekend (Technically, one is just a revamp of an older model).

AGA Frigate - Designed for engaging Frigate-class and smaller vessels, particularly Cutters. It's small hangar bay can carry several Mag Fighters or Rebel Hunters (Ariel Fighters and Bombers are two wide to fit). In addition to the fighters, it's armament includes 11 Medium turrets 21 Anti-starfighter guns, and 10 forward mounted Anti-starfighter missile racks (70 missiles in total). This armament makes the Frigate a formidable opponent for its size (appx. 300 meters)







AGA Magnetizer Cruiser - Designed by Emc'ron engineers after the conquest of the industrial Delphi sector and resources of Milenthwayii as the answer to the Unity's Assault Cruisers. The first vessel, the Britannic, led the charge to retake Condensten (the former capital) from Unity occupation. In the ensuing battle, half a dozen Assault Cruisers were crippled and the remainder fled with heavy damage. The Britannic herself was lost, along with many fighters and support ships, but the battle turned the tide of the war and demonstrated its effectiveness against heavy cruisers.

The primary weapons of the vessel are the two wing-mounted magnetic cannons. Each cannon has its own independent generator mounted inside the 'wing' block, and can output a mag blast capable of sheering through weakened sheiding and disrupt the systems in a large blast radius. Precised targetting can quickly take banks of batteries out of the fray while leaving relatively little damage to the overall hull of the ship, enabling starships to be captured more easily.

In addition to the cannons, it features 20 Heavy Turrets, 29 Medium Turrets, and 34 Anti-starfighter guns, leaving it slightly shortgunned next to the Assault Cruiser. [excluding the mag cannons]. It features a large starfighter hangar, though, comparable in side to that of the Assault Cruiser. There is no large docking bay for housing landing craft and assault transports, however, and thus is ill equipped for launching land invasions.

This model was posted before, but I wanted to go back and fix some things and make the model a bit more detailed. A basic overview of the changes:

Bridge created. It was virtually non-existant before.
Greebles, especially the towers, revamped. Placed less chaotically, especially among the sensory nodes.
Hangar bay changed from a box inset to a dual layer hangar bay with more detail.
Turrets updated.
External viewports placed along ship, especially overlooking turrets.
Mag cannons completely changed. Removed the three large cannons (bottom, sides) and placed them on the wings.
Changed wings from housing warhead bays (realistically way too large to be such) to containing the mag cannons and generators for them.
Adjusted size (now ~963 meters)

Without further ado:





EDIT: added to demonstrate size

Haha, how ironic that this, of all thread titles, repeates itself!

Anyway, the actual ship(s) look excellent. They look like they could support a whole city inside and on them, as well as just serving military duties. They're very detailed, and unique, I really can't offer any valid criticism. I look forward to seeing them textured.

I don't understand it; you're ships are always so awesome... except from the top.

Which I don't get in the first place. I think it would be so much more awesome to see a 'space ship' that's not tied to the concept of a 'top and bottom'. We kinda see that idea with Star Destroyers, which were designed to orbit 'upside down' above a planet and bombard the surface with it's dorsal guns.

Sure the aritificial gravity probably has to go all the same way, but realistically 'down' would be towards the engine, making the ship into a big tower with the very top as the bow.

*shurg* The only reason I can think of for explaining that is how I went about designing these ships. Every one of the Unity ships was sketched out with top view in mind. I designed them primarily around a horizontal dimension. These AGA ships, however, were all designed primarily with the side profile in mind, and so they are more vertically oriented. There's not really much I'm going to do about it, though. I like the style I've chosen for the AGA starships.

Though I must say, I don't really understand what you mean about the ISD design. It's still designed with a top and bottom in mind, it's merely got to reorient itself in orbital bombardment to put forth its big guns. Mine could likewise do the same. It's not like the top profile of a Star Destroyer is anything to drool over. Corvettes on the other hand....

Humans are used to a top and a bottom, which is reflected in all human designs. Just look at star trek space combat...it's always happening on a plane. Or look at the newer games like Homeworld or Star Wolves. You CAN travel in the 3rd dimension in these games, but ships are always oriented on a fixed coordinate system. Additionally, in Star Wolves, ALL level objects (like space stations, asteroids, etc.) all lie in the same plane. Maybe someone took the term "navy" a little too literally?

Anyway, I'm really impressed by all of your ship designs. The amount of detail is amazin, and you somehow manage to pull of different consistent style groups.

they look like deadly cruise ships. is there a pool?

Shot #3 of the winged ship is aaaaaaaaaaaawesome.

If I were to truely describe the masterpiece that these ships are, I would take up about 2GBs of simple text. However, I'll sum it up into 3 bytes.



wow

Those things are BEAUTIFUL!

Why would "down" be towards the engine? I would imagine space craft would mimic naval vessels or aircraft, engine allows for horizontal movement.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. People just can't stop to think in a plane. There is no single point of gravity in space, and thus no up or down. There is only a behind and an in front of the ship (relative to the travel vector). Real space battleship designers will have to deal with this problem. They certainly can't mimic naval ships, because there would be serious "weak directions", forcing the spacecraft to reorient itself for maximum firepower/defense.

But then again I'm not striving for absolute realism. The story is meant to convey other ideas. It might not be the optimal design, but since they're both operating under similar pretenses, it doesn't matter all that much.

Sure. It's one of these cases where realism has to step back in order to make things better. I really like your creations. All of them. You should use them for a Homeworld mod. I would LOVE to see them in action.

Physics corruptions here, so I apologize, but everything is affected by a potentially unlimited points of gravity, tho most are too far away or too small of mass to be any effect because of inverse square law of universal gravity (Gmm/r^2), not to mention, most things in space lie relatively in a plane due to the rotation of the originial nebulas or stuff *shrugs* I dunno why, but the planets of star systems lie in discreet planes usually, least as far as I've been taught.

Speaking of "weak directions" there will always be this case due to lack of overlapping fire fields of the gun turrents, usually it's close by the engines because the engines have to be large, tho there are ways to design around this but I'll shuddup now on this.

However, in the end, you're right, realism must take a few steps back because noone is prob going to be that picky about it because its fun to watch/play. :p

Simple: Newton's third law. The engines pushing forward causes everything inside the ship - including you - to push back against it. It works just like centripual force, which simulates gravity by making the floor push against you. I've only ever read one sci-fi series that didn't have 'artificial gravity' that made down different than towards the engines. Without such technology, a ship under thrust would have gravity towards the engine, with a strength in proportion to the power of the engines (Thus why the thrust of the rockets that carry the shuttles into space is often measured in 'gravities'.) When the ship was at a constant velocity, the contents would be in free fall. All the major sci-fi shows on TV have some sort of artificial gravity technology in them, and all the planets they visit seem to have a gravity of exactly 1 g.


In such cases where the ship has engines pointed in different directions, it would be accurate to say that 'up' is always the same as the ship's current heading (If it's moving sideways; up is sideways), but only while it is accelerating. This would be a problem for space ship designers, as the walls would also be floors. Halls would probably end up being cyllindrical, so that no matter what way was 'done', there would be a floor. They might also be arranged in u-bends, or spiral around the ship, so that someone caught at one end of the hall when the gravity changes couldn't fall the entire length of the corridor. They would also need ladders traveling lengthwise, as well as lifts and stairs in multiple, orthogonal directions. There would be halls that under one orientation were perfectly normal, and under another were verticle shafts. Three halls would come together like orthogonal axi, and there would have to be some sort of hatch to cover the whole in the floor. Your sleeping quarters may have a door in the ceiling, which would be the wall under a different orientation.

And, of course, there would have to be handholds everywhere for use during freefall.

Those are bloody awsome. Truely amazing.

Now in regards to the hole top bottom thing(i just had a light read incase i missed this point) wouldn't ships generally have to have a top and a bottom? I mean when they come into an atmosphere they would need a floor(like the cargo ship in jk). I mean wouldn't it be a little confusing if your sometimes walking on the roof but other times it's faster to run down the wall? Also if you critisize this shouldn't you be critisizing just about every sci fi space ship in existance.

I really like your ships (not limited to the ones in this thread). The style your ships tend to have reminds me of an old Mac game (E.V. Overide) I used to play at my friend's house when I was a kid. It does make me sad to see so many untextured though. Texturing can be a pain though, so I won't give you any flack for not texturing your ships before you showcase. Mainly I hate aquiring textures (I mean making them as well as finding them on the web). It takes so much time and it's hard to get them just right.



Then clearly the best design for a space ship would be a sphere covered with thrusters and equally distributed weapons. This being the case I say something like a giant seeker remote would work very well. The Borg Sphere from Star Trek accomplishes this the best because of both the interior and exterior but the Death Star works too. The Death Star is just too big and slow though.

Come to think about it what the hell are you guys talking about? Theres no reason a ship like that wouldn't work. I mean it has the same basic principles as a space shuttle(minus the awsome shape and guns! No to mention one hell of a lot bigger).

I am.


Try reading what I wrote next time.

If you didn't make such long boring posts I would.

Take a physics class, let it corrupt you, then you'll understand.

Plus the Space Shuttle is built also for atmospheric flight, ie re-entry, thus it will maintain conventional aircraft design, however, in space, both the shuttle and the astronauts in them are in constant free fall and exhibit weightlessness, therefore the shape becomes irrelevent.

So you guys claim to have the knowledge of what will be possible in the future(this looks like a future ship to me). I mean for ****s sake I don't think 400 years ago anyone was thinking about computers and cellphones and whatnot. How can you say It's not possible it might be one day?

While some people may not be able to think of the differences in physics in space, it seems you might be overlooking some lifestyle and operation changes.

IMO, big spaceships-at least, ones big enough to have passageways-aren't going to be making all sorts of random velocity changes. Most time would be spent plodding along a predetermined course, not dodging unrealistically close together asteroids. For a similar reason, I don't really see the need for ships with main engines all over.

In my mind, any vessel large enough to qualify for long corridors (that doesn't have some magic gravity generator) would be designed in a linear up/down fashion. Attitude and speed changes would be announced on the 1MC. In the case of something drastic happening, there would of course be various areas for emergencies, so that you could, I dunno, tie yourself to the wall or something. I personally think that any large ships would be designed a lot like modern vessels, but laid out like a high rise building, with elevators and such.

All the vessels that would actually be doing millenium falcon stuff are going to either have fancy unrealistic sci-fi gravity generators (yes, I'm going to invent the fancy unrealistic thing soon) or, due to the small size, have everyone strapped in a lot like we do with airplanes.

In summary, I'm wondering where you got these twisty corridors when they could just illuminate the shipwide seatbelt sign. Maybe I'm misunderstanding everything you're talking about?

To create a constant gravity-like force, a ship could be built like a huge cylinder, rotating on it's axis. Of course, that would exclude small ships like interceptors and frigates, but stations and tourist-cruisers could be built this way.

Also, I don't think wargear is influenced by lifestyle-decisions. Ships designed the way they are in current Sci-Fi movies have lot's of weak spots. Sure, there COULD be a reason for this, but as they are currently only fantasy, the reasons are probably of artistic nature, and not technical.

Dear Borg, you're having a debate like that here? Poor Massassi Temple Forums.

Great models, as always.

Yeah. Rendevous with Rama has an awesome example of that. Problem is, it would have to be either huge or spinning fast to work, I think.

Yeah, I was talking like actual future stuff not fantasy stuff. I love some crazy crazy fantasy stuff!

Just to steer this back on topic maybe we should be talking about the model, as apose to why all sci-fi ships couldn't happen.

Heh, I just realised what this one reminds me of: Thunderbird 2!

You're in a battle. You are being hit. Hard. Your damage control teams are hard at work... no, wait, they have to strap themselves in so you can take evasive manuevers! Nevermind that fire!

Besides which, I said COULD, not WOULD.

Actually, it wouldn't. Ever been on a spinning wheel at a playground? Also, there's virtually no friction in space, so it shouldn't be a problem to accelerate it to sufficient speed. Also, it would then rotate forever at this speed.
But you are right, the rotation could lead to problems, namely maneuvering difficulties due to rotational inertia.

Good point.

I like how you can see the workings.